State senator Beau McCoy introduced a bill on Thursday that would ban several different classifications of synthetic drugs.

Kali Smith said she lost her 18-year-old son Tyler to the effects of a form of K2 at the beginning of this school year.

"It took his mind away from him, it took his ability to think straight away from him," Smith said.

Tyler, a Bellevue West student, started smoking a form of K2 in August 2012, she said. In September, Smith said her son lost his will to live.

"He just, he walked into the house one morning before he was going to work -- walked in the house, changed his clothes, went downstairs, and killed himself," Smith said. "Me and my husband -- we were sitting on the living room couch, and [Tyler] was downstairs, and we heard the gunshot."

Smith said her son had never before exhibited suicidal tendencies. She said she suspected he was using drugs for weeks, but doctors and counselors couldn't figure out which drug through standard drug tests.

Nebraska lawmakers banned the various forms of K2 in 2011, but the KETV NewsWatch 7 I-Team learned that different types of synthetic drugs have appeared since then.

Christine Gabig, a forensic scientist at the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, showed the I-Team a list of dozens of synthetic drugs that wouldn’t appear on standard drug tests.

"2C-B, 2C-C, 2C-D," are just a few of the phenethylamines Gabig read off of the list readily found through a quick Google search.

One phenethylamine in particular, 2C-I -- also known as "smiles" -- has become more popular in the last two years, Gabig said, despite the fact it's more dangerous than methamphetamine or LSD.

"It can completely put your heart into overdrive, and it can kill you," she said.

Less than two weeks ago, police in St. Louis County, Mo. said they became aware of 2C-I circulating the St. Louis metropolitan area.

The I-Team spoke with a mother from Chesterfield, Mo. who said she believed that her teen daughter mistakenly ingested the drug while attending a New Years Eve party in Wildwood, Mo.

She said the girl came home disoriented, hallucinating, and highly sensitive to light and sound.

The mother said she contacted police, who told her that the symptoms were consistent with the effects of 2C-I and about the drug's similarities to LSD.

Even though LSD is illegal in Missouri and Nebraska, 2C-I and the chemical compounds related to it are legal.

Gabig said chemists in Asia, who are producing synthetic drugs, found a loophole.

"What [the drugs] are is they're chemically based on a substance that is already known to be [an illegal] drug, and then [the chemists] change the molecule just enough so that it's not that same drug anymore, and then it's something they can legally sell," she said.

Gabig said the drugs are sold as powders that can be eaten when combined with food, smoked when combined with an herb, or dissolved in a drink.

The I-Team learned the synthetic drugs are easy to buy. In just a matter of minutes, the team found them labeled as "research compounds" on several different websites that claim to have connections to laboratories in Asia.

State senator McCoy said he wants to ban the compounds since they do not serve any other purpose outside of human consumption.

"We don't have to worry about them being used for some agriculture purpose, fertilizer purpose -- that type of thing," McCoy said.

If passed by Nebraska lawmakers, the legislation would expand the ban already placed on forms of synthetic cannabinoids.

McCoy said he expects 100-percent support from his fellow state senators. He said the bill has an emergency clause attached to it. That means if it were passed, the legislation would go into effect immediately.

Regardless of the legislation, Kali Smith said she hopes parents will become increasingly aware of synthetic drugs and will talk to their children about the dangers.

"I don't want another mother to have to sit here, and -- the grief and torment and despair of losing her child, and go through what I had to go through," she said.

Smith will testify in support of McCoy's bill as it progresses through the legislative process in coming weeks.

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